RunawayTrain

[RunawayTrain]

There’s a reference to James Last in As Time Goes By, S1E3.  (Context: lamenting societal presumptions – “A woman passes 50 and her idea of sexual activity is supposed to be soaking her feet and listening to James Last.”)

Just mentioning it here because Red Dwarf is the only other time I’ve heard of him, and didn’t know where else to put it.

[RunawayTrain]

ChatGPT it surely?

Steady on, they couldn’t risk being seen to endorse that kind of behaviour.

[RunawayTrain]

Missed a couple of days 🙄

23/02/2026 

1

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20/02/2026 

5

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19/02/2026 

4

[RunawayTrain]

18/02/2026 

3

#RedDwarf #Smegle 18/02/2026 

Demons & Angels, backwards down the Reds

I almost guessed D&A too.  (And did the same as you with the Reds.)

[RunawayTrain]

17/02/2026 

2

[RunawayTrain]

I prefer Rimmer’s oily series X hair over the XI/XII wig

Me too!

[RunawayTrain]

16/02/2026 

1 (missed a day, again!)

[RunawayTrain]

I enjoyed that, very much!

[RunawayTrain]

14/02/2026 

2

[RunawayTrain]

Missed a day, oops

13/02/2026 

1

[RunawayTrain]

11/02/2026 

3

That was frustrating

[RunawayTrain]

10/02/2026 

2

Had no idea (clearly!) until it clicked.

[RunawayTrain]

09/02/2026 

1

[RunawayTrain]

08/02/2026 

Well that’s annoying.  (Parallel Universe, Bodyswap were the two wrong series guesses.)

[RunawayTrain]

07/02/2026 

6

[RunawayTrain]

Oh that’s sad news.  What a guy.

[RunawayTrain]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 06/02/2026 

6, surprised at everybody else tbh

Oh hush.  :P

06/02/2026 

5

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05/02/2026 

4

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04/02/2026 

3

[RunawayTrain]

03/02/2026 

2

[RunawayTrain]

02/02/2026 

1

[RunawayTrain]

I failed but the page glitched and just gave me a blank grey box without telling me the episode or results to copy.

[RunawayTrain]

This’ll make everyone feel better about their efforts

31/01/2026 

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30/01/2026 

2 (I forgot to post yesterday’s, and ereyesterday forgot to do Smegle)

[RunawayTrain]

27/01/2026 

3, I think

[RunawayTrain]

26/01/2026 

2

[RunawayTrain]

Well that was part of the thing about DS9, the Federation had joint control of the station but it was still owned by the Bajorans, who weren’t in the Federation. 

That’s interesting, I knew they weren’t in the Federation but I thought (assumed) Bajor was broadly post-capitalist too.  Not the space station itself of course, I didn’t miss all the references to shops … I’ve never entirely understood how Federation members managed with the shops, but I guess I assumed however they did it, the Bajorans did the same too.

Hmm.

[RunawayTrain]

25/01/2026 

1

[RunawayTrain]

24/01/2026 

TPL, if I’d got the series first I would have got it.  (But I couldn’t work out what I was looking at until the reveal.)

[RunawayTrain]

23/01/2026 

1

[RunawayTrain]

No one ever gets so excited about The Jetsons references…

THANK you that was really annoying me not being able to place it.

[RunawayTrain]

22/01/2026 

Hmph.

[RunawayTrain]

21/01/2026 

4

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20/01/2026 

3

[RunawayTrain]

Tomato purée and/or garlic granules (or purée) are always a good call.  Nutritional yeast too (although the upfront cost of it in bulk to make it economical probably puts it out of reach for broke students* – and obviously wasn’t an option when Grant & Naylor were students).  Umami without the saltiness.

*so stock up on it before becoming a student and broke, if possible.

[RunawayTrain]

19/01/2026 

2

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18/01/2026 

1

Oh, managed to miss a day again without even realising.

[RunawayTrain]

16/01/2026 

1

[RunawayTrain]

Hang on, are you saying that Pete Part Two is a good episode, or just that if it were a good episode, if would still be a bad first episode because it’s a “Part Two”?

Asking the real questions.

[RunawayTrain]

CaB has been the subject of some truly shameful moments from myself over the years. I sometimes wish the internet was withheld from me until at least my 30s.

I’m forever grateful that the vast majority of the rubbish I wrote on the internet was (is) contained within LiveJournal.  Twitter got some of the immaturity but nothing tooo cringeworthy.

[RunawayTrain]

It’s back up for sale (same seller I’m pretty sure, clearly the previous sale fell through for whatever reason) 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/358103006217

[RunawayTrain]

15/01/2026 

*sigh*

Well at least it didn’t turn out to be the one I’d ruled out.

[RunawayTrain]

14/01/2026 

5 (streak randomly reset on the Smegle page and provided a strong reminder of why I keep track of it here)

[RunawayTrain]

People also need to know how LLMs work, they’re not thinking or evaluating for accuracy, not choosing words based on their meaning, they’re all just statistical probabilities on top of statistical probabilities.  Like a very refined version of T9 predictive text, with an algorithm to make the output something that humans perceive as sounding natural.

That’s why genAI can produce output that contradicts itself, whereas if it ‘knew’ the meaning of the words it spat out, it would be able to identify such inconsistencies.  People say it regurgitates what it’s been trained on but they say that with the connotation of ‘it repeats stuff’ – but the regurgitation is in much more of a literal sense, it jumbles it all up first then retrieves words according to the algorithm.  If it did just repeat stuff it would at least be minimally reliable instead of entirely unreliable.  I mean the models can’t even reliably do basic maths!

[RunawayTrain]

We didn’t have a TV until the turn of the Millennium, and the only sci-fi any of my family were into was Gerry Anderson, so there was no chance of me finding Red Dwarf as a child.  A friend introduced me to it in the early 2010s (along with Stargate among other things – though I had found TNG and VOY myself by then – and I introduced her to another few things) but I didn’t know of any way to watch it at home myself, although I do have very vague memories of watching some of the Dave era.  I was becoming properly ill when XI and XII came out so there were episodes I had literally no memory of watching, either because I missed them or I watched but they completely fell out of my head.  And the ones I did recognise slightly when later doing my own full watchthrough, it was only certain moments I recognised.

Sometime before the pandemic hit I caught a couple of episodes on TV, Polymorph and Bodyswap, and I suddenly remembered how much I’d enjoyed RD when I watched it with my friend several years prior.  It turned out they were all available to stream and I dove right in.  Looking up something about the production or behind-the-scenes led me here.

So although it was those two III episodes I happened to catch on TV that reminded me about RD, my first episode was definitely The End.

[RunawayTrain]

13/01/2026 

4

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11/01/2026 

2

12/01/2026 

3  (and it kept my streak!  Previously if I’ve left it too late and finished after midnight, it’s reset.)

[RunawayTrain]

10/01/2026 

1

Huh, I missed a day and completely didn’t realise.

[Author]

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